Carte Generale Des Decouvertes de L'Amiral de Fonte representant la grand porbabilite d'un Passage Au Nord Ouest par Thomas Jefferys Geographe du Roi a Londres 1768.

1772 Vaugondy / Diderot Map of Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and the Northwest Passage

Publication Date: 1768

About this Item

Very good. Margin reinstated at insertion point, else excellent. Size 11.5 x 14 Inches. This is Robert de Vaugondy's 1772 map of the northwestern parts of North America and the northeastern extremes of Asia, issued in the supplement to Diderot's groundbreaking Encyclopédie . The map summarizes a blend of new discoveries and wild speculations regarding the coastlines of the North Pacific and the possibilities of a navigable Northwest Passage. De Fonte In particular, this map was dedicated to presenting an imaginary passage between the Pacific and the Canadian Maritimes, attributed to the fictional Admiral Bartholomew De Fonte. The purported seventeenth-century voyages of this Spanish explorer appeared first in a short-lived 1706 English publication entitled 'Memoirs of the Curious.' In it, De Fonte was said to be a Spanish Admiral who, sailing up the Pacific coast in the seventeenth century, discovered a series of gigantic lakes, seas, and rivers heading eastward towards the Hudson Bay. Supposedly, upon one of these great inland lakes, he met with a ship from Boston that claimed to have come through a Northwestern Passage. It is a testament to the excitement surrounding the De Fonte geography that two maps of the ten produced by Vaugondy for Diderot were dedicated to it. As fabulous as the De Fonte narrative might seem, it was eagerly adopted by geographers of the day: Joseph-Nicholas de L'Isle and Philippe Buache would include the De Fonte narrative in their own speculations of the Pacific Northwest (in part in support of their equally fabulous Sea of the West). English mapmaking giant Thomas Jefferys adopted the De Fonte narrative wholesale - including it with his map depicting Müller's peninsula, an important precursor to the present work. In accord with De Fonte's suggestions, this map displays the strait of Juan de Fuca continuing inland past the large lakes of Velasco, Belle, and De Fonte to communicate with Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay. There are also a series of rivers and waterways connecting the lakes themselves to an outlet in the Arctic. Based upon Russian reports, Vaugondy renames the 'Straits of Anian' the 'Detroit de Bering (Bering Strait),' paying homage to the great Russian navigator. Anian itself has been moved southward nearer to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It first appears on 16th-century maps of Gastaldi and was rapidly adopted by the cartographers of the Low Countries. It should be noted that at the time Anian was conceived, geographers had no concrete evidence whatsoever that Asia and America were separate landmasses and that its resemblance to the actual Bering Strait would be entirely fortuitous. The proposed existence of Anian presupposed the existence of a Northwest Passage and, as such, was entirely mythical, though the lands that are now Alaska long bore that name. Further south still, we find Quivira, one of the legendary Kingdoms of Gold. Nearer to Russia, the Aleutian Islands have been consolidated into a large peninsular landmass extending eastward towards Asia. In the extreme north, between 80 and 60 degrees of latitude, is an archipelago, presumably discovered by Japanese sailors marooned in Kamchatka and purportedly inhabited entirely by pygmies. Publication History and Census This map was among the ten maps prepared by Robert de Vaugondy for the Supplement to Diderot's Encyclopédie . The Supplément à l'Encyclopédie is well represented in institutional collections. The separate maps appear on the market from time to time. References: Rumsey 10402.013. OCLC 945089389, 606367852. Pedley, Mary Sponberg. Bel et Utile: The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers. 455. Kershaw, Kenneth A., Early Printed Maps of Canada, 1231. Wagner, Henry R., The Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America to the Year 1800, Vol II, 637. Portinaro, Pierluigi and Knirsch, Franco, The Cartography of North America 1500-1800, #159. Phillips, P.L. (Atlases) 1195.

Seller Inventory # DeFonte-vaugondy-1768-4

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Carte Generale Des Decouvertes de L'Amiral de Fonte representant la grand porbabilite d'un Passage Au Nord Ouest par Thomas Jefferys Geographe du Roi a Londres 1768.
• Publication Date: 1768
• Seller catalogs:
  • ALASKA-HAWAII-MAPS